So, How Is Mexico’s Track Record In Elderly Care?

There are many advantages to obtaining medical treatment and health care in Mexico, but not if you’re an Alzheimers patient.

Some 350,000 people in this country have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but the available infrastructure to care for them is lacking: there are only eight daycare centers specializing in treating it and other forms of dementia.

In contrast, the United States has as many as 30,000 “care and companionship” centers, with a live-in population of around one million residents. For comparison, the U.S. has about three times the population Mexico has. And the U.S. has 5.3 million Alzheimers patients. That means either Mexico has piss poor record keeping, or they have piss poor diagnostic tools, or Americans have something screwy going on in their genes or in the air to have so much more Alzheimers cases.

The most recent data available, fand it’s for 2013, shows that life expectancy for Mexican women is 79.7 years, and for men 75, almost the same as Americans, and yet they spend a fraction on health care that we do.

Mexico considers people of 60 or older as senior citizens, a segment that currently represents 9% of the country’s population. By 2050, estimates are that 26.5% of the population will be older than 60.